Embrace the Weird

“Oh Jennifer, you’re so weird.” I just blinked owlishly at her with my mind racing. How is it possible that yet another co-worker at a completely different job said the words I dreaded to hear? I was in my late twenties and had spent my entire life working to fit in. And it was work! I was so frustrated by my inability to fit in with my colleagues and co-workers. I mean, what was so wrong with wanting to be part of the “in-crowd”, I was just a girl not a rebel or a world-changer – I was just…me.

Bounce ahead thirty years and my fifty-something self would tell my younger self – “Oh child, EMBRACE THE WEIRD ‘cause it’s never going to change!” It’s not that I can’t imitate the world, lose myself in the normalcy of going with the crowd - I can, I’ve done it and been shamefully successful - but thank you God that I never lost the “taint” of weird.

Now I can honestly say I revel in it, and here is why. The moment my five-year-old self folded my hands in the Sunday School prayer circle and asked Jesus into my heart I died. A new creation in Christ rose up in my place. Something never before seen in this world – me as a God-creature! I suddenly became an alien on my own planet, a sojourner. I had the fragrance of heaven on me and I would never, ever fit in again.

I wasn’t meant to.

I was meant to stick out, to draw attention to the difference in me, to be alien in a world striving for sameness. Why? Because my God longs for the earth to be His and the only way to do it is through us. He gave His Son to ransom us away from the pool of sin and same. He does not want your conformity, He wants people curious about you. “What makes you different,” they ask (the translation is weird). They can smell us. We wreak of otherness. There is a scent of the divine on us and as we spend time with Him the fragrance only grows stronger.

Oh that I had understood in my twenties, perhaps I would have become a world-changer then. I am one now. Everywhere I go I take the whiff of heaven with me and when someone around me needs to touch my God, my Master, I am there. Do I give off the scent of Him perfectly? Nope. In fact, a lot of the time I miss it entirely, is my buying cheese and parsley for tonight’s supper really more important than the frazzled mother in the pasta aisle staring at 3,000 cans of tomatoes with littles hanging off her? No, absolutely not! And heaven forbid I walk by her without reaching out to smile, chat a little, help her find the diced basil and oregano Roma tomatoes and surround her with the fragrance of God and His character.

I will probably never be one of those bold, glorious people who walk up to others and within five minutes are asking them if they know where they are going when they die. But I am someone who is getting better everyday at listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit when He tells me what the little tomato aisle mama needs today. And I spend time everyday at the feet of my Jesus and I am fragranced more and more like Him. I’m learning how to pray His will into this darkening world. I’m learning that He meant that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood” thing as the Holy Spirit teaches me to pray (and He led me and my Beloved to a wonderful prayer teacher by the name of Gina Lynnes – check out Lynnes Ministries for Prayer 1 & 2, it will change your life – you were warned [grin]). https://lynnesministries.com/product/prayer-course/

Oh, and I am getting weirder and weirder everyday – but in a good, new creation kind of way… and I like it. I’ve decided embracing the weird is a really good thing. If you catch a whiff of Him in this, you might be getting weird yourself…